Paul Rice

After college, Rice bought a one-way ticket to Nicaragua to work with smallholder farmers, thinking he would stay only one year.[16] As it turned out, Nicaragua became home to Rice for 11 years. There, he became a specialist in rural economic and cooperative development.[17] Traveling throughout the country, he helped hundreds of smallholder farmers organize cooperatives.[11]

In 1990, still in Nicaragua, Rice founded PRODECOOP, the country's first Fair Trade, organic coffee export cooperative. Within three years, the coop grew from 24 families to over 3,000.[18] Through the cooperative, these farmers got direct access to the global market and received higher compensation for their work. The additional income enabled them to improve the quality of life in their entire community.[8] Throughout this experience, Rice became convinced that the market—rather than foreign aid—was the most sustainable mode of poverty alleviation.[19]

After serving as CEO of PRODECOOP for four years, Rice transitioned leadership to a native woman who was the first female to lead a coffee company in the male-dominated Nicaraguan coffee industry.[11]

Subsequently, Rice served as strategy consultant and development advisor to 22 cooperative enterprises throughout Latin America and Asia, helping them become more competitive, democratic, and self-reliant.[20] His years of first-hand experience abroad in the areas of global supply chain transparency, social auditing, sustainable agriculture, and cooperative enterprise development led him to found Fair Trade USA.

After 11 years working with cooperatives, Rice returned to the US to expand the market for Fair Trade goods. The products would be certified as Fair Trade by his start-up, Fair Trade USA. Rice opened the first "national headquarters”—a one-room office in a converted warehouse in downtown Oakland—in late 1998.[10] He started off working with just a handful of mission-driven coffee companies. After gaining traction with coffee, Rice expanded the certification across new product categories, including fresh produce, spices, and cotton.[8]

Fair Trade USA works with over 800 businesses, which have adopted Fair Trade practices and carry its certification label on their products.[11] In 2011, Fair Trade products were valued at an estimated $1.5 billion. The organization currently certifies about 11,000 different products, enabling more than 8 million farmers, workers, and their families to live better.[2] By offering these individuals the opportunity to earn a livable wage, Fair Trade USA has helps them fund a range of community development projects, including water sanitation, health, and education programs.[21]

In 2011, Rice came under fire for his decision to resign Fair Trade USA's membership from the Fair Trade Labeling Organization (FLO), the international fair trade labeling organization.[7] While FLO only certifies small cooperatives (in coffee), he wanted to expand certification to farm workers and independent smallholders that were previously excluded from Fair Trade. The move was controversial, given Fair Trade's tradition of working with small scale farmers. After the split, Fair Trade USA launched the “Fair Trade of All” campaign, an agenda for doubling the impact of Fair Trade and including more people in its benefits.[8]